[Fix] Drives Appearing Twice in Navigation Pane of Windows 10 Explorer “This PC”
Today we are going to address a weird problem or you can say a bug in Windows 10 operating system. Many readers have reported this issue. Some of them faced this issue when they upgraded from Windows 10 RTM to the recently released November Update (TH2) and some people faced it after upgrading from Windows 10 RTM to any Insider Preview build.
Since the release of Windows 10, Microsoft has added a new feature to Windows Explorer or This PC. Whenever you attach a removable drive such as USB drive or external hard disk, a separate icon of the drive is shown in the left-side Navigation Pane. Also the same drive icon is shown under This PC section, so you get double entries of the same removable drive in Navigation Pane. It was done to provide quick access to removable drives but having two duplicate drive icons in Navigation Pane becomes confusing sometimes.
But that’s not the problem which we are going to talk about. The problem is, many Windows 10 users are getting double entries of fixed hard disk drives in Navigation Pane of This PC. For many users, Windows 10 is showing many drives twice in Navigation Pane just like it does for removable drives. But the problem is those duplicate drives are not removable. The drives are fixed hard disk drives.
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Following are 2 different screenshots which were shared by our readers. You can see the issue in the screenshots:
If you are also facing this duplicate drive entries problem in Windows 10, this tutorial will help you in fixing the issue and removing the double drive entries from Navigation Pane of This PC.
To fix this annoying issue, you just need to remove a key from Registry Editor which is responsible for showing removable drive icons separately in This PC’s Navigation Pane. Since somehow Windows 10 detects the hard disk drives as removable drives and shows their icons twice in Navigation Pane, we can disable the built-in feature to show removable drive icons separately in Navigation Pane to fix this bug or issue.
We have already shared the Registry tweak to remove removable drive icons from Navigation Pane in This PC in following exclusive tutorial:
[Windows 10 Tip] Remove Icons from Navigation Pane of This PC
The trick to remove removable drive duplicate entry from Navigation Pane has been given in the Part 5 of the above mentioned tutorial.
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For your convenience, we are going to provide the same solution again here:
1. Press WIN+R keys together to open RUN dialog box. You can also open it from WIN+X menu. Now type regedit in RUN dialog box and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.
2. Now go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\DelegateFolders
3. Under “DelegateFolders” key, you’ll find {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} key.
4. Now delete the {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} key and it’ll immediately remove the duplicate drive icons from This PC’s Navigation Pane.
Now you’ll no longer see any drive icon twice in the Navigation Pane of This PC.
NOTE: If you are using 64-bit edition of Windows 10, you may notice that the drive icon is still present in “Browse” dialog box such as Save, Save as or Open in some 3rd party 32-bit programs. To remove the duplicate drive icon from there, you’ll need to perform the same steps in following key as well:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\DelegateFolders
Under “DelegateFolders” key, delete {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} key.
PS: If you want a ready-made Registry script to do the task automatically, its also given at the end of the above mentioned tutorial.
Ref my earlier posting when I said I couldn’t find the key, I forgot to open regedit as administrator.
I have now removed the key and it works fine – fantastic,
Many thanks.
Ian
Problem solved. But, will be there any problem we face in future by removing that?
^^ No.
Man alive, it actually worked!
Another way to hide all the folders of the drives, except the main ones, in the Navigation Pane and if you are a bit worried about removing something from the Registry is to go to Explorer>View>Folder Options>View and down the bottom is the Navigation pane, uncheck all of these items and the folders don’t appear when you open Explorer.
please try subst G: /d
Awesome tips! thanks it works.
Wonderful, thank you so much!
it does not work.
Ghost drives still there.
Any other advice?
Worked puuuurfect!!! Was driving me nutz. Thank you so very much u very clever cheerz
thank you
Thank you. Worked like a charm and instructions were very easy to follow. Grateful, thanks 🙂
thanks you
Fungerar utmärkt! (Works like a charm!)
I have a different problem to everyone else. I deleted the key as instructed in the hope of removing the doubling up of the appearance of my external drives and the result was none of them show at all now.
I recreated the key just as you described to try and reinstate it, but it had no effect.
So not only did the fix not work for me, I can’t access my removable media any more as they don’t appear in the navigation pane.
Pleeeeeease can you help me get it back.
I am happy to keep the double up appearance now in comparison to the result I have of not being able to access my removable drives at all.
Thanks for the Windows 10 navigation pane (in the but) trick .
Worked Perfectly.
Many thanks = )
I’ve followed your advice, but sometimes windows explorer will still duplicate the same drive in the navigation pane.
But in addition to your fix, I opened regedit and went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\NonEnum , created a new DWORD (32-bit) value named {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} and set the data for {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} to 1. Log out and login back for the change to take effect.
I hope it will still work after the next Windows Update.
Hello everyone, and thanks for this simple and absolutely effective tip.
thx worked great.
Thanks
worked perfectly. Thanks 🙂
Thanks, the fixed worked great
Was getting double entries of drives, desktop, documents etc. Followed the steps and deleted the key {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} key. Everything was fine for a while but problem has recurred. Now there is no such entry under delegate folders, so cannot delete anything!
Please help,
Thanks a million,
Pankaj Mehta
^^ Please share a screenshot to understand the issue.
I was using your tip and it worked as advertised. However when I updated to W10 build 19043 (may 2021) the problem came back. Went looking for the registry key to delete it again but “delegate folders” wasn’t there. So I decided to add the key back in then delete it again. As soon as I went to edit the “namespace” key the delegate folders key within it showed up and I was able to delete {F5…. as recommended. I wonder if the other people who are having the problem but can’t find the key to delete it are having the same hidden behavior I ran into. Suggest they try to edit (don’t actually change anything) whatever key they can get down to in the hierarchy and see if the rest of the chain appears.
Simple, straightforward instructions. Thank you.
Thank you this worked perfectly – I’ve been trying to solve this problem for months, and it was difficult to even figure out what search terms to use. Glad I came across your post.
Thnx 👍
Perfect. Very simple and quick. Thank you!